Page 1 of Healer
Chapter 1 – Agnes
Pain.
Sharp and quick.
My mind conjured an image of a knife moving through warm butter as the point of the blade entered my skin.
I didn’t flinch.
I knew pain.
Never-ending spasms that made every joint in my body feel like the fires of hell itself burned within the bone and tissue. Pain so severe that the legal and medical limits of codeine and morphine only managed to dull the sharpness, allowing me to function in normal society.
"Urgot dervuian atorouius."
The thing implanted in my brain that translated alien language changed the words to English with only a second's lag.
"This one is defective."
If they only knew.
"She doesn't even acknowledge the cut." The second of my torturers said in a slightly wondering tone as he made another swipe with the blade along my forearm. This cut hurt worse, and my teeth sank into my tongue to stifle the sound of pain.
Yeah, fuck you, buddy.
I'd bite my tongue out of my mouth before I’d give them the satisfaction of screaming.
And they wanted me to scream.
I kept my eyes shut, using the techniques I'd learned when the pain in my joints got so bad that merely walking across the room was an experiment in agony.
And I prayed.
Not that I'd ever been a religious sort. But being abducted by aliens, not knowing what happened to my friends, and finding myself a guinea pig for alien poking and prodding would make anyone open to the idea of a benevolent deity.
Please, God, let my friends be okay.
The Tuesday Night Outlander Book Club members had been on a nature hike along the Appalachian trail. I’d voted to go to a day spa for our monthly outing. But not wanting my friends to realize my growing infirmity, I'd hopped myself up on painkillers and hit the trail. We'd settled into camp for the night when the proverbial white light bloomed in the sky above. The next thing I knew, something that looked like a sphinx cat with four tits pulled me out of what had to be some type of alien medical machine.
The shock of waking up pain-free came secondary to the strange, gray machine restoring my body to its youthful glory. I had only a moment to ponder the possibilities before being loaded onto a second spaceship and brought here.
I remembered seeing a dense jungle when the spaceship came in for a landing before four tall gray aliens ushered me into the concrete Twinkie and into a cell. For a while, they kept me warm and well-fed. I was just dumb enough to be grateful until I realized why.
This place served as some sort of medical research facility... and I was the guinea pig.
In the first week, they tested my tolerance for different food and drink. I fared well in these tests. Of course, during my years of medical school, weekly ghost pepper eating contestswere all the rage. With the cast iron stomach of my twenties back in play, I could eat mostly anything and not suffer.
Except for the slimy mushrooms... I threw up after those, but the gray aliens didn't seem surprised.
The second week comprised some sort of sleep testing. I don't think I passed. I've always been a bit of a bitch when woken suddenly, even as a small child.
This week was either pain tolerance testing or punishment for throwing things when they woke me last week.
It hadn't been pleasant, but at least my high tolerance threshold seemed to upset them.
Please, God, don't let any of the other girls have to endure this.
I'd almost prefer to know the cat aliens sold my friends as sex slaves rather than guinea pigs. I, at least, had enough experience to gauge my fate. I would end up on an autopsy table at some point, and oddly, the idea was comforting. It was what might come prior to the autopsy that had me worried.
